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After a week spent all along the spectrum of hurricane strengths, Dorian is now clocking in at Category 1. While it might not be carrying the same wind speeds it was as a Category 5 or Category 3 hurricane, Dorian is still dropping buckets of rain and massive amounts of flooding in South and North Carolina.
Let’s look at Friday’s storm update to see what Dorian will be doing over the weekend.
The storm’s current impact on the North Carolina coast is quite serious, in spite of the downgrade to Category 1. Damaging storm surge flooding, high winds and heavy rainfall have all been spotted across the coastline. In Edgecombe County, NC, trees have been toppled by the heavy winds. Pamlico Sound and Middletown have both been reporting secondary roads flooding from storm surge and torrential rains.
The outer rain bands of Dorian are currently wrapping up and around to impact regions further inland in North Carolina and Virginia. This means that regions even far from the coast can expect higher than average rainfall. The bands of rain are forecast to wrap around as far north as Ocean City, depositing between 2 and 4 inches of rain even hundreds of miles from the storm’s eye.
At the time of this writing, Dorian’s eye is hugging close to the North Carolina coast, not far from Cape Lookout. This means that areas as far south as South Carolina’s coast and as far north as Southeastern Virginia are being pummeled by hurricane rains and storm surge flooding. As the day wears on, the storm will continue to crawl northward, and the storm should peel off into the Atlantic Ocean by the end of the day.
Throughout the evening late Friday, expect to see the storm begin to affect Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod. By Saturday, the storm will likely bring tropical storm force winds, heavy rainfall and potential flooding to the southeastern region of New England. Into Sunday, the storm will likely move rapidly across the ocean towards Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, Canada.
